Wellbeing (health and safety)

CFS wants to 'make work a better place to be' for all our colleagues and in 2007 responsibility for occupational health and safety management became a part of our Wellbeing function, within the Human Resources Division. We believe that achieving excellent standards of colleague health and safety goes beyond just legal compliance, and that our co-operative ethics clearly require us to protect everyone affected by our operations from harm.

Our new wellbeing-led and people focused approach to occupational health and safety will be innovative and effective, aimed at engaging all colleagues across all our business areas to meet their responsibilities to work safely and allowing CFS to gain full benefit from the commercial advantages that this will create.

We continue to develop and maintain our occupational health and safety policies and protocols, in liaison with our Trade Union colleagues. Where synergies exist, we are working with colleagues in the wider co-operative businesses to ensure we take full advantage of economies of scale and use resources wisely to both procure services and equipment and develop joint initiatives.

Together with the more specific occupational health and safety inputs above, our Wellbeing activities include bringing a variety of new initiatives and events into CFS workplaces, which are aimed at health promotion and lifestyle enhancement. Our in-house gym and wellbeing suite is available to all colleagues, and locations away from the Manchester hub are benefiting from increasing access to both physiotherapy and alternative therapies. All CFS colleagues have 24/7 access to a third-party Employee Assistance Programme. We will continue to develop and improve our Wellbeing provision through 2008 and beyond.